'Snowpiercer' Episode 5 Review: Melanie Cavill makes a terrible decision with grave consequences for the train
Spoilers for 'Snowpiercer' Season 1 Episode 5 'Justice Never Boarded'
The plot thickens and revolution is in the air as TNT's 'Snowpiercer' reaches the halfway point of its first season. Episode 5 'Justice Never Boarded' puts LJ Folger (Annalise Basso) on trial but Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly) is the one facing the real test. After her horrifying crimes against Third Class and the train, LJ is put on trial, with tensions mounting across the train. But as things reach a boiling point, Melanie is forced to make a decision that will have long-lasting repercussions.
On the one hand, Third Class is threatening a strike if they don't receive justice. On the other hand, LJ knows things about Melanie's secret agenda that could jeopardize the fragile balance of Snowpiercer. Unfortunately, even though she allows Third Class representation on the tribunal that judges LJ for her sins, Melanie pulls an underhanded trick that may just be the first step to revolution. Unwilling to allow LJ to reveal whatever secrets she has discovered, Melanie fakes a message from Mr Wilford that commutes LJ's sentence from life in the drawers to house arrest in her parents' lavish First Class carriage.
By choosing self-preservation, Melanie has shown that at the end of the day, she cares more about maintaining the status quo than she would admit. That decision resonates really strongly with the title. There is no justice on Snowpiercer, only the furthering of self-serving agendas and individual delusions of what may be the greater good.
In any case, Melanie has now made an enemy of Miss Audrey (Lena Hall) and the whole of Third Class. And elsewhere in the episode, Josie Wellstead (Katie McGuinness) and Bess Till (Mickey Sumner) manage to rescue Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs) from the drawers and smuggle him to Third Class.
With Layton free and recovering in Third Class, it's only a matter of time before he convinces them to join the Tail's revolution. And with all the enmity that Melanie has generated with her ill-advised move, it would take a miracle to stop the fires of revolution from engulfing the train.
'Snowpiercer' airs on Sundays at 9 pm ET, only on TNT.